Meanwhile I started working a bit in the writers’ club, cutting hair and shaving people every day till noon, and in the afternoons I worked in the synagogues. And so I earned a few roubles for food. Because the people living in my synagogue had been registered for departure to the Russian interior, I moved in with the Szumacher family, a widow and her son. He slept on the couch and I slept on a bit of broken wall, thanks to which I was able torent it for 20 roubles a month, a real bargain. However, I had to prove to her that I wasn’t from Warsaw but from Łódź, and an acquaintance of hers came with me to vouch for my honesty. Although I got up in the morning aching all over because the mouldings of my wall couch dug into me all night, and when the weather was very cold I had to cover myself with my overcoat, I was nevertheless pleased that I wasn’t living in the dirty, lice-ridden synagogue. Mrs Szumacher, however, couldn’t provide me with more than a cushion. The widow and her son, a wood turner who made clogs, surely hadn’t done too well before the war either. [16] Now that I have private living quarters I have to look for work in earnest. Every day I run to the administration, where they hold some of the job offers for work at the barber shop in the town bath house, butthey always tell me I’m on the list, and that’s all. Meanwhile, a comrade sends me to Moyshke Kopłowicz at 3 Piłsudskiego Street, who wants to take me on. He tests my professional skill and the result is positive, but since I don’t have an apron I have to sit in the booth and wait bitterly till a worker goes to lunch so I can put on his apron and get to work. Only on Fridays and Saturdays didthe owner give me an apron to put on. He was afraid that I, a refugee, would earn too much working a whole week. But even so, I managed to earn 60 to 80 roubles a week, and later, when the German worker Balesta had to leave the Russian-occupied territories together with the Germans, I began to work half days and then full days, and didn’t earn badly at all.
Departure of the first transport from the occupied territories to the Russian interior
My brother stood in the queues for two days and nights. Thanks to the intervention of an influential friend of mine, I managed to get him sent not to Siberia but to the Moscow region. I am stopping specially for a moment in order to describe the departure. At the beginning of December, after being
BIA ŁY STO K AN D THE WESTERN BE L ARUS [ 7] 66
